


Night Scenes

by fancyday



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Flatmate Sherlock, Friendship, Gen, John Watson's Blog, Sherlock Can't Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-10-21 01:32:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10674948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fancyday/pseuds/fancyday
Summary: Just four short scenes from Sherlock's POV looking at three nights in 221B.





	1. Night Scene I

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a native speaker, so please feel free to point out any errors:)  
> The quotation from scene I is from "Dark Night of the Soul" by St. John of the Cross, which I came to know through Ola Gjeilo's wonderful choir composition of the same name.

The lights went out and he was alone. Both of which he didn’t mind. Especially when he knew he wasn’t really alone. John was next door, in the living room, reading that blue book with the silver title the last Desperate Girlfriend had forgot. It was not like most books John read and Sherlock didn’t know why he had kept it, so balance of probability was sentiment, Jeanette had been the name, the boring teacher.

The case was nice, today. He could already hear John typing it up for his blog, with two fingers. At best. Apparently he had abandoned the book. It was good that he had already started, because it meant that John didn’t think it was a horrible case like after what he called The Great Game (and that was what Sherlock called it secretly as well, but only secretly because he was meant to hate the blog and especially the titles). After that it had been ages before John had started writing his blog entry, which Sherlock hadn’t understood. 

Sherlock closed his eyes. He was tired without wanting to sleep, which he got a lot. He wanted to read what John was typing, but John would never let him read it before he posted it on his blog, not even to check the grammar. He wanted to call out to John, but that would be a stupid, childish thing to do. He could just lie still and wait for sleep. He listened to the typing. 

He thought about whether the sound of the typing offered any clue as to what John was writing, but the only thing he could determine were paragraphs, when John hit the enter key with a bit more vigour than necessary. Sometimes the typing stopped for a while and Sherlock pictured John pursing his lips or pinching the bridge of his nose, thinking. Once he heard John get up and make a cup of tea. 

He listened for well over an hour, and then John opened the door, and he looked into the room and tried to see whether Sherlock was asleep. Sherlock didn’t say anything because he liked that sort of thing. He just watched John and liked it that John couldn’t see him because his eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark. 

Why are you not sleeping, Sherlock?

I was listening to the typing. 

Sorry.

I liked it.

Oh. But I’ve finished.

So I gather.

I’d have preferred it if you’d been asleep.

I preferred listening.

Was that preferring or just making the most of it?

Sherlock said nothing, because he was still in the dark and in his bed and under the blanket and that meant he didn’t have to answer and John couldn’t see what he was thinking. He probably guessed anyway, though. John could be very clever that way.

What did you call it?

The case? _The devil incarnate_.

But she didn’t -

I didn’t mean her, Sherlock, I meant you. Joking. I thought it sounded good, and I don’t want to hear your opinion right now.

_In darkness and concealment, my house being now all still. All still._

Read it for me.

The blog? So you can have a laugh?

Sherlock frowned. Why would he laugh?

So I can sleep.

Sorry.

What for?

Doesn’t matter. Are you sure that’s a good idea? Won’t you get all upset from so much bad grammar?

It’s odd the way you write it. Not logical at all. It doesn’t make sense because you leave out the deductions.

Because mostly I don’t know what the deductions are when I’m on the crime scene with you, and I just write what I saw and noticed.

John left the room and Sherlock wasn’t sure if he’d offended him, but he came back with his laptop and sat down on the floor.

You have to sit on the bed because it will sound odd from where you are.

John sighed and sat down on the bed, which Sherlock could feel because the balance stopped being right and he had to shift to be as comfortable as before. The light from the laptop was bluish and then greenish when John opened his blog. It looked a bit like the room was underwater and made John seem very pale.

Sherlock closed his eyes and waited. When nothing happened he opened them again and said, What are you doing?

Sorry. Here goes.


	2. Night Scene II

The wind was loud but it was nice because there had been a storm before and it hadn’t been bad at all. There were interesting sounds, though, and Sherlock listened. The oven sounded different because the wind came into the chimney. Wood creaked, and he heard the ambulances more often. He missed that when he wasn’t in London. 

Odd that he should miss the sound of ambulances. He was tired, and the room was dark, but he was still researching for a case, a new case, and John was still out with the new Desperate Girlfirend, though Sherlock sensed she would soon be an ex-girlfriend after the incident with the paint. But he didn’t like her, anyway. She was boring, but John didn’t seem to mind. Sherlock wondered where he got them from, they were all the same.

His eyes burned from little sleep and the computer screen, but if he closed them he would fall asleep, which he didn’t want.

He heard John on the stairs. Definitely an ex-girlfriend now. John had only been gone for an hour.

What was her name again?

Liz. Don’t bother remembering it now, though.

John sat down in his armchair. Just turn the laptop off, Sherlock, and go to bed.

It’s not my fault you’ve split up with her.

I wouldn’t be too sure, you know. I seem to have caught the word boyfriend again when she was yelling at me.

I’m not your boyfriend, though, so it’s her own fault for misinterpreting our relationship.

Well, you can’t deny that I spent much more time with you than with her.

Yes well. I’m much more interesting.

John sighed.

Sadly, you’re right.


	3. Night Scene III

Being home alone was a bit not good.

Sherlock read case files and did some case research on his laptop at the same time. The room was cold, but he couldn’t be bothered getting up to turn the heating on or light a fire. Also it would have felt like defeat. He had been hungry a little while ago, but it had gone away. Cooking took too long and did not make sense for a single person. Not that he ever cooked when John was there, either. John did that. John also lit fires. And John told him to go to bed, occasionally.

Sherlock’s eyes had long since started to burn. Everything looked slightly foggy, and whenever he shifted his focus from the files to the screen or back again, a slight dizziness Sherlock very consciously ignored made itself known. But he couldn’t go to sleep. John would come home and find him asleep, and coming home to find no one to talk to was not good. And sleeping without being ordered to was impossible. It would prove to John that Sherlock did need sleep, more than he thought he did, and just liked being sent to bed by John. Sherock liked to have John tell him these things occasionally. That way he didn’t have to bother himself, and could pretend he only did these petty human things because John wanted him to.

The cold case he was solving was proving to be more complicated than he’d thought. He loved and hated this, not being able to see through something at once. It provided him with a wonderful challenge, a chance to show his genius, and it kept boredom at bay for a while. But behind all that there was always the fear of failure. The thought of how Lestrade would look at him, or Donovan and Anderson, if he failed to solve the case.

John wouldn’t mind, though. That much was fairly certain.

Sherlock sighed and turned back to the file. Victim in his late forties, worked for an insurance company, single but with occasional affairs, mostly with married women. A jealous husband, perhaps?

"There was really no need to wait up for me."

Sherlock huffed. He wasn’t waiting up, he was working. "How was the conference? Anything interesting?"

"No, no-one’s been able to tell me how to keep a mad consulting detective-flatmate at a healthy level of food and sleep. So a waste of time, really."

"Indeed."

"Go to sleep, Sherlock."

"But -"

"You’ve just been waiting for me to tell you to go, haven’t you? There you are, now you can go, no harm done, no-one need ever know you wanted to go before I came."

"Thank you, John."

John smiled. "Git. Sleep well."


	4. Night Scene IV

There was such a storm that the rain came in waves. 

The trees swayed, slowly. The streetlamps looked like showers, and the cars seemed to swim. The noise was a roar and a small patter over the roar. 

There was lightning. The rain was so loud he couldn’t hear the thunder. He had had to open the window, and the rain had fallen on him, sprayed him. Lightning. The yellow light from the windows stayed calm. The night sky was grey and blue, and white with the lightning. 

Then the violence stopped. The rain stopped waving, and the flashes became less bright. He hated this relenting of the storm. He wanted to be in it at the very centre.

Lightning. Lightning and the rain growing ever softer. The roar was fading and the patter stayed. 

Lightning, lightning in the distance and hardly any rain. Tiles glistened. 

Lightning, white lightning and no rain. The water that had been the rain gurgled as it flowed away.

The rain was quiet and now the thunder was there, all soft in the distance. Everything was blurred because of the water on the windowpane. He did not like the blur.

A soft patter returned and sounded as if it would stay for the night, calm and the single drops audible. 

"Do you like thunderstorms?"

Lightning, lightning still. A car. The wind and the rain gave a peculiar feeling of life. He wanted the air to cool and the wind to blow.

"Not much."

Lightning as a small drop ran down on the pane before his eyes. It gathered up other drops as it went and accelerated and flowed down and was gone.

They looked at each other.

"The drop is gone."

John smiled.


End file.
